Darkness in Man's Shape
by Malicean
Summary: The Dark Lord of the Sith, such a convenient target for fear and loathing – and both so well deserved, too. Yet there is a war going on, and war brings out the best and the worst in everyone. Collection of short stories.
1. Prologue

**A long, long time ago, a galaxy far, far away was at war.**

**It had been at war for decades and would stay that way for**

**quite some time to come. Many centuries later, some historians **

**would look back and call this period the Sixty Years War, while their**

**colleagues would distinguish several different conflicts in that time span, **

**denying a common origin for all of them. For the beings living through those **

**disputed years, though, History had not yet coalesced from the stories of their lives. **

.**  
**

**These are some of those stories, brief glimpses into a world both terrifying and intriguing.**** Be**

**advised, though,**** that this is a world of many shades of grey. A world of honorable foes and vengeful **

**mobs, ****where the adage about terrorists and freedom fighters might be true both ways. A world where the roles**

**of ****heroes and villains may flip, depending on a certain point of view. A point of view that changes between stories, for**

**there is**** no connection between them, nor a fixed timeline to follow, beyond the fact that all take place during the Emperor's**

**reign. Some settings are dark, some lighter, some stories short, some a bit longer, most will feature people you have never heard **

**of ****before – and probably never will hear of, again – except for one reoccurring character that plays a pivotal role in each and every story.

* * *

**

A/N: I confess to have some strong pro-Imperial feelings, because, admit it, Darth Vader is by far the coolest character of the lot, and he is canonically always on the Empire's – not necessarily the Emperor's, but always the Empire's – side. So, while I try to have some decent people on both sides of the fence (or even sitting on the fence), if there is a truly nasty character, it won't be an Imperial OC. Canon provides enough of those, so I guess it balances out, in the end. I'm not painting the Alliance black, though, if human history is anything to go by, resistance against the Empire is such a bloody mess of independent groups – and individuals – of any degree of idealism, morality and bloodthirstiness that literally anything goes. Still, if you prefer to see the entirety of the Empire's forces as epitomes of evil and every single creature to oppose them as paragons of virtue, some of these stories might not be what you want to read. Feel free to skip those, or even better, tell me why things can't possibly happen that way, in galaxies far, far away.

A/N 2: I'm not much into the Expanded Universe, so I try to keep compliant with the Movieverse, but everything else is fair game.

A/N 3: Rating. Well…it's a war, unpleasantries happen. I try to keep it non-graphic, so if you're old enough for the evening news, you're old enough to read this. How old does this make you? I say T should do, but if you have strong arguments otherwise, rating might change.


	2. Monster

A/N: As of 20/05/12, chapters 2 and 4 have switched places, to avoid, as someone has so colorfully put it, _a scarecrow at the reception desk_. I had my reasons to start high, but will no longer treat my gentle readers to a headlong plunge into the darkest scenario, first thing into the series. And yes, brightly named _Beacon _is a much darker story than the ominous-sounding_ Monster_.

* * *

_He who slays monsters is by necessity more terrible than the monsters, isn't he? How else could the monsters fear him?_

The word _'parade'_ had held no meaning for the four-year-old child. It was a word he was beginning to recognize, though, while terms like _'inauguration ceremony'_ and _'sector governor'_ stayed random strings of syllables that went straight over his head. Parade meant excitement, strange clothes, shoving crowds – even on his aunt's favorite balcony; meant countless new and wonderful, terrifying, fascinating sights and sounds.

The troops marching in flawless formation glittered in the sun and were therefore fascinating – but only very shortly. The walkers, in all their ominous majesty, were obviously "Dogs!" and triggered a somewhat heated discussion about the things such a large – and metal! – beast would eat, or not; and no, he could not have one, not even a small one, his mother was quite adamant on this. The flight of TIEs screaming overhead made the child cry at their first pass, but had him waving, with shrieks of delight, by the time they finally ascended back towards the stars. When all this fierce splendor had passed on or come to a standstill, and the crowds grew silent, the little boy expected something even more wondrous to follow. He was extremely disappointed, when a rather ordinary man on a nearby tribune began to talk and talk and simply wouldn't stop.

Desperate for something, anything, more interesting than the talking man, the four-year-old leaned forward as far as he could, while still firmly held by his mother's arms, and looked around. The afternoon sun was throwing long shadows all over the place, one of which was slowly encroaching on the tribune in front of the governmental palace. In fact, there was a piece of shadow at the back of the tribune already, the boy thought, until a sudden gust of wind set not only the banners hung from every available surface, but also the detached piece of shadow aflutter. He looked closer. Something huge and ominous was standing there, a vaguely humanoid figure, tall and dark, with a black cloak billowing behind it, like ebon wings. The large creature scared the little child.

"Is that a monster?" he asked in a frightened whisper, pointing at the ominous piece of shadow come alive.

His mother looked shocked and started sputtering, but his uncle Jufa, a man the boy rarely saw, laughed in an unfriendly way and said, "A monster? Damn sure, he's a monster, the monster to chase away all other monsters."

It made perfectly sense, to the little boy. Monsters were scary, so it stood to reason that they were only afraid of something even scarier.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Highly overwrought but also tired out by all the excitement of the day, the child was sent to bed quite early in the evening. He knew better than to protest to his mother when she wore that particular expression, and the best he could wheedle out of his nanny was to be read from his favorite storybook in exchange for getting into his pajamas without a fight. Despite his insistence on the contrary, the four-year-old was asleep before the first story was half through.

He was awake again, on the other hand, an hour before midnight. The room was mostly dark, and the child clutched his favorite stuffed Wookiee closer to his chest. Whenever they visited his aunt and uncle, the family was accommodated in the same suit in a side-wing of the palace, so he had slept in this room before, but he didn't like it, at all. There were loads of shadowy niches and unfamiliar pieces of furniture that all seemed predestined to harbor monsters in the dark. His nanny was sleeping in the room, too, the little boy could even hear her soft snoring, but old Irem was patently useless against monsters, because she steadfastly ignored their very existence.

The child snuggled deeper under his covers, wishing he had his flashlight with him, light being, after all, the only thing that monsters were afraid of.

Then he sat up with a start. That wasn't true, anymore, was it? Just this afternoon he had seen something – someone? the child wasn't too sure about that – that even monsters found scary.

Before the monsters could divine his plan and snatch at him from underneath the bed – and before his nanny could wake up which would have ruined the plan just as thoroughly – the four-year old was out through the door and padding noiselessly on bare feet along the lighted corridor outside.

Faint music and laughter was wafting from the main wing and the little boy followed the sound. It didn't occur to him that _'the monster to chase away all other monsters'_ might not be found among the laughing revelers.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Before long, he ran into an unexpected obstacle, though. Stormtroopers were patrolling the hallway he had planned to follow, and while he was old enough to realize that they weren't snowmen (mysteriously come alive), as one of his playmates called them, he was also old enough to comprehend that the white-armored men would in all likelihood send him back to bed. He ducked into an ornate niche, frowning in thought.

The garden side! Unlike the balconies facing the public square in front of the palace, the balconies on the garden side were built in one continuous piece, partitioned only by elaborate screens. As he had found out at his last stay, the screens could be circumvented by squeezing through the balustrade – too ornate to provide much of a barrier for somebody his size – on one side, clamber past the partition hanging to the outside of the railing and slip back onto the balcony. His nanny had almost had a heart attack when she found him halfway through the balustrade, six storeys above the ground, and had strictly forbidden him to ever try that again, but she had said nothing about traveling from one balcony to the next. And anyway, these were special circumstances, the boy decided.

As he had hoped, there were no guards on the inner balconies, and so he made his way without incident towards the site of the great ballroom. He was just about to enter the last of the unlit balconies, when something in the shadows hissed at him. The child froze. There was a moment of silence, then another hiss and then one of the shadows started to move towards him, red lights glowing in the dark. In his sudden fright, the little boy tried to back away, but there was nothing behind him but empty air. Clawing for a hold out of his reach, he fell backwards with a gasp, too shocked to even scream.

A firm grip stopped his fall, he was lifted over the balustrade and then a huge fist took hold of the front of his pajama. There was something backwards about that sequence of events, the child realized, but then all thoughts fled him, because _the monster to chase away all other monsters_ was glaring down on him. His brilliant plan suddenly seemed much less so. What if the monster ate little boys, like the krayt dragons his nanny had told him about?

"I do not eat little boys," a voice, so deep and close by that he could feel it vibrate through his very bones, growled.

The boy gaped. The monster could read his mind!

"I can. But who taught you to call me a monster, boy?"

"Cool!" the four-year-old breathed. Then he remembered that he had been asked a question, and because his mother and his nanny had done their best to teach him manners, he tried to answer it correctly.

"Jufa said that you were the monster to chase away all other monsters, and I thought… Ithoughtyoucouldchaseaway themonstersinmybedroom" Face to, uh, chest with the monster, it didn't sound like a great plan at all. "Sorry, sir," he added prophylactically.

There was a really odd sound. Then a hiss. Then another odd sound, a bit like a muffled laugh and a hiss at the same time. And another hiss. The hiss was not directed at him, the boy realized, it was just something the monster did, all the time. Which made sense, because it was a scary sound, and you could never be certain that there were no other monsters hiding in the shadows, unless they were scared away constantly.

"Very well," the deep growl cut through his ruminations, "let's hunt some monsters," and then the monster – it hadn't told him to call it something else, had it? – tucked him securely under one arm – and jumped on top of the balustrade.

"Cool!" the child had barely time to think, let alone repeat aloud, before the tall figure jumped again, this time over the part of the partition that protruded beyond the balustrade. In this incredible manner, the length of the garden balconies were quickly navigated, and the-four-year-old barely remembered in time that his nanny was still sleeping in his room, before the monster's heavy step could wake her. At his whispered warning, the black gloved hand waved in a peculiar way in the direction of Irem's bed before he was informed, that "she will not awaken until morning."

That detail taken care of, the monster put the little boy down on his bed, before summoning something metallic to its hand and igniting a hissing red flame from it, longer than the four-year-old was tall. The child watched in open-mouthed amazement while the monster swung the crimson flame around the room, slicing through all the shadows that might have served as prospective hiding places for monsters, before extinguishing the flame and declaring the room monster-free for now and for all.

The little boy didn't doubt this statement for a second.

The black gloved fist, almost as big as the four-year-old's head, reached for his forehead for a moment, its touch cool and surprisingly gentle. "Sleep now, young one, and never be afraid of monsters in the dark again," the deep voice rumbled, and the child was asleep before he hit the pillow.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Many years later, old Irem would look back and pinpoint the day when the boy, she had raised more as her son than his own mother had, had become utterly fearless wherever darkness or strange creatures were involved, as the one when she had inexplicably woken to a faint smell of ozone. The ensuing stunts had cost her many a grey hair over the years.

Watching her former charge, now a young man, embark smilingly on a ship destined to explore the Unknown Regions, she wondered, not for the first time, what had given him the unshakable confidence. Her only clue were some cryptic words, uttered about a decade ago and long since forgotten, in all likelihood, that the one thing, more terrible than any monster, was his friend.


	3. Justification

_Those who appeal to a higher power better hope that said power once stood where they are now; otherwise it might not even recognize the need for assistance._

It was a generally shared conviction among the military, that if the amount of energy that went into doing paperwork could be harnessed for a more productive purpose, the galaxy would have been pacified ages ago. This conviction was shared even by the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces. Lord Vader hated paperwork with a passion. Nonetheless, his desk was swamped with it, even if his aides condensed everything into its most concise form.

Working his way through a pile of documents he merely needed to sign off, the Sithlord came across the file of a court-martial, that had taken place somewhere in the sector. The representative of the defendant had filed an appeal – really a routine formality, that almost never changed anything about the original verdict – and as one of the involved parties had answered directly to Grand Moff Trachta, the next higher authority was him. He skimmed trough the datapad, eager to get to the point were he could add his signature and end this charade, when something caught his eye.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

What happened next was never satisfyingly explained. Lord Vader was _not _known for being merciful. The most reasonable explanation was a budding rivalry between the Grand Moff and the Supreme Commander, expressed in a petty insult – which did not sit very well with anyone knowing the Sithlord's rather forceful personality.

But what other reason could there be, for the draconian Commander to pardon a young officer who had not only freed a number of valuable slaves but attacked a superior officer in the process, reducing the sentence from summary execution to dishonorable discharge? Surely the young idiot's pathetic justification, starting with an overly melodramatic "They are not just slaves," could not have held any more sway with the Sithlord than it had held with the quartet of officers constituting the court-martial?


	4. Beacon

Warning: This story contains both the darkest kind of setting you are likely to find in this collection and the highest rating (upper edge of T). If you can stand this, though, nothing else will scare you.

* * *

_In war, all sides have monsters and all their tiny sparks of light. _

They never ask me if I want to do this. In fact, I do not. Most emphatically not, but nobody cares. Nobody likes me, not even Daeks, though he is the only one who enjoys my presence. He enjoys to use me, I should say, the perfect tool for certain occasions.

Like this one. I have no idea who he is, this man I am locked in with, but then, I'm not here for my conversational skills. I'm here to make him talk. That's where I'm useful.

I hate being used, it makes me angry. And the more angry I become, the more useful I get, the more often I get used… a vicious circle. Bad things happen when I get angry. I can't control them but I hate the result and the hate feeds them further and the spiral spins faster.

_The spiral spins faster…_ A good image and I try to keep hold of it, but it dissolves too fast. So, scrabbling for purchase on this side of sanity, I finally take a good look at my latest victim.

He's crouching awkwardly in the furthest corner, hands secured behind his back, covered in bruises and the odd burn, but nothing else. They stripped him completely, but something in the way he holds his head, split lips and all, makes me see the stiff grey collar and peaked cap of the Imperial officer.

"Courier from the _Devastator_," I remember a snatch of overheard conversation, "he has to know _something_ about that black monster's plan."

I try to keep it all outward observations, but this whole setup is built specifically to ensure that I have no other targets. He is in pain and somewhat afraid but now mostly curious, because I'm not what he expected.

Not what he expected – no, I'm much worse. And for that I hate myself and I hate him for trying to be a hero which has brought me into this situation and I hate Daeks for dropping me into situations like this, in exchange for food and shelter and the most basic dignities. And the first wave of the black tide, of whatever it is that breaks loose when I lose control, slams him into the wall.

I brace for the surge of fear and terror that will follow now, sucking me under completely, but beyond the shock of impact and the pain of jolting cracked ribs, there's only recognition.

"You're like…," he starts in pure astonishment, before he catches himself and clamps his mouth shut again.

The fury drains. "There is another one, like me?" I dare not hope it's true, though I can feel he isn't lying.

"Not like you, he is not like anyone else," he says, with a bone-deep conviction, and I know exactly why Daeks felt the need to unearth his pet monster to break this man.

He gives me an appraising look and starts to detail just why I'm vastly inferior to this mysterious, tantalizing _'Him'_, but he's dog-tired and in pain, his derision only a paper-thin disguise. He does not feel any of the scorn he tries to convey, so it's pure provocation, which is a very stupid thing to do – or plain suicidal, which is not stupid at all, in his situation. He doesn't have that razor-edge of makeitstop-makeitstop-makeitstop, though. Instead… instead there is a sort of desperate satisfaction.

I claw at myself, fighting to keep the black tide at bay, to keep clear enough to think. I have felt this feeling once before, when falling masonry had smashed the legs and part of Uire's torso, and a whole squad of stormtroopers was surrounding him. He felt like this, just before he let go of the thermal detonator, taking half of the squad with him. I'm the detonator, obviously, but… "The rest of them is out of reach, where they won't get hurt."

"Yes, they will," he replies, but he won't say more. It's frustrating like hell, and, already heady with the mix of pain and desperation pouring over me and the faint echoes of glee and fear further off, I can't take frustration. The black wave surges over me, but just before his mind is swamped by the frantic wish to make the pain stop, there is a tiny spark of triumph. It shouldn't be there, and I cling to the oddity.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

When I resurface, he's not where I last saw him. I find him in another corner, no longer in a crouch but facedown on the floor, gasping desperately. I crawl over to him, trying to push him upright but he's heavy – _well, duh, he's a grown man, after all_ – and jerks away from my touch, at first. His skin is slick with sweat and other things, but I wipe my hands _before_ I touch him, because the floor is worse, sticky with old stuff. I get him propped against the wall, at last, and slump down beside him, gratified to find his breathing even out in the upright position, though with a wet wheeze that tells me that I have pushed a broken rib into something serious.

What now? I usually know better than to touch people, because that gives me the sort of sensory overload that makes me miss anything else – which is how Daeks keeps me from noticing his newest trap before I fall into it – and the usual deluge of fear and hatred isn't something I enjoy either; yet I couldn't let him suffocate there on the floor.

Not now that he has given me a first glimpse of a fellow being, something to raise me beyond _'monstrous freak'_ and into '_people'_ territory.

His mind is pushing frantically against the black clouds of unconsciousness and I should pull away, but beyond the animal fear of a dangerous creature, which he is fighting down fiercely, and a generalized hatred at his tormentors, there is a weird feeling aimed at me, suspiciously close to respect. No one ever respected me for anything, and while I realize I'm getting spill-over from an all-consuming loyalty and respect this Other-of-my-kind inspired, I'm not ready to let go of it, yet. Not that I could if I wanted to, we are leaning into each other as much as against the wall and if I tried to move away, he would end up falling on top of me.

When I'm sure he's mostly lucid, I try to find out more. '_Tell them you know their plan and point out how stupid it is, and they will feel the urge to correct you'_ Tolvin once said, before that failed ambush killed him, and he was an investigator, before he joined the rebels. He wasn't talking to me and he added '_sometimes it works'_, but it's the most I know of interrogation, other than being an instrument of terror.

"Last time I met someone who behaved like you, his legs were smashed by a collapsing wall but he had a detonator and he didn't let go until the stormtroopers had found him. He was in a lot of pain and I'm sure he wanted it to end as soon as possible, but he waited until they were close enough to get caught in the blast." I stop, gulping air, I don't usually talk so much, but there is no reaction and I plunge on.

"I'm the detonator, obviously, and you are trying to bounce me off the walls, but there's nobody to take with you when I blow up." I know he listens but he's still feeling smug. Smug and the tiniest bit regretful.

"You are the beacon, that will call him here," a whisper so soft I barely catch it, though our heads are almost touching.

A beacon. I laugh, an ugly sound in the half-buried box of solid metal, but it's only half derision. Taivel has a legacy of rebels far older than the Empire, and very much into low-tech solutions. Flashing lights have signaled the passage of patrols and tax-collectors since times immemorial. When I think beacon, I think a source of light and no one, least of all myself, would compare me to the light. The other half is disbelieving hope, for the kind of beacon he means, signify something worth coming for. Coming for me.

I didn't realize I said that last part aloud before I get an answering snort. "Who else? A wayward lieutenant is certainly not worth his time."

But I am. I bask in the glow of that revelation for a moment before reality catches up with me and I start thinking furiously. Taking-you-with-me, a beacon to home in on and a being with my sort of powers but the ability of gathering respect which implies some measure of control at the very least, in sum it can only mean one thing. I look up, at the recording units I know are there, even if I can not see them, and try to come up with _one_ reason why I should give Daeks the chance to play his games even one more time. One reason to like any of the people he has gathered around him, who know what he does and still stay with him, more than the nameless enemy beside me. One reason to protect those whose pity is the best I can ever hope for – and most of the time, it's fear and loathing, or worst, an eagerness to possess me. I can't find any and for the first time in my life, I reach for the black tide willingly.

I imagine a beacon, I imagine a beam of black, invisible light angling into the sky, plotting out nearby stars, a gigantic Here-am-I sign for that other creature who knows this terrible power, and I pour everything I have into it. The fury of not knowing I wasn't alone, the hate for everyone who told me I was, the seething jealousy for _Him_, who has respect where I haven't.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Something hits my face, again and again, cold and stinging. I blink, the black tide recedes, and find myself soaking in the rain, the ceiling above me, space-rated titanium alloy though it was, torn off by an explosion that should have reduced anyone inside the former cargo container to red puree. The afternoon rainsquall is pouring in and has pooled ankle-deep on the floor already. The Imperial is squashed into the corner, staring at me with eyes as wide as the swelling would allow, and this time the fearful respect is well and truly mine.

I laugh again, and I'm still laughing when Daeks pulls me away, with a vicious kick at the captured Imperial, still laughing when he drops me because his comlink went wild.

"… just jumped into the system…" I don't hear more, but I don't need more, because I can feel _He_ is here.

Daeks drags me back to the ruined container, now half full with water, but thankfully someone else has pulled the prisoner out before he drowned. I feel his indecision, weighting the value of a hostage against a weapon as powerful but unpredictable as me. I hope he chooses me, it seems poor gratitude to get the man shot by his own comrades, when he has given me hope for the first – and likely last and only – time in my life.

Daeks does choose me, but by the time he has bundled me into his speeder, the low-hanging clouds are not only pouring rain, they also started pouring ships. I watch a flight of fighters reduce the few bigger weapons to smoking rumble while a pair of armored carriers disgorges armored men. A handful of fighters, in perfect V-formation, are homing in on us and Daeks gives up on the doomed attempt of escape. He stops the speeder and the fighters, to my mild surprise, don't turn us into ash and plasma. Instead they hover, ominously, in an ever tightening half-circle. Daeks has no choice but let them herd him back towards the ruined camp.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Near the container I wrecked less than an hour ago, he stops again, near a cluster of white armors, then gets out of the vehicle with his hands held high above his head. Someone coldly angry is bellowing orders, and Daeks visibly puts his blaster to the ground, then, slowly and deliberately, reaches back into the speeder to get me out. I don't particularly like being held in his arms, but right now, I'm distracted. The TIE in the middle of the half-circle, the one that was flying point before, has a shape I have never seen before, but I only notice that peripherally. The presence inside is far more captivating. I watch the TIE come to rest on its repulsors, then a hatch opens, several meters above the ground, and a dark figure glides out, to hit the muddy ground with all the grace of a stooping bird of prey. Daeks, both angry and fearful before, experiences a spike of fear so intense and unexpected, it almost shoves me all the way into the black tide. I scramble for a hold, determined not to lose control in front of _Him_ so easily, grabbing at every sort of sensory input except emotion.

I watch a black cloak billow in the biting gusts of wind, unhampered by the heavy rain. I watch the cluster of white armors shifts at the Dark One's approach, and catch a glimpse of a floating gurney. I barely make out a deep rumble of "Well done, Lieutenant Piett," before he turns towards us.

The fear spikes again, but this time I am anchored, as well as I can manage – and almost flounder, anyway, when the fear is followed by a wave of icy hate.

"Kill him," Daeks whispers, his voice little more than hot breath against my cheek. Then louder, stepping forward, "Please, sir, she's just a child, she's injured…"

How dare he! Tethering on the edge, it took me a moment to process Daeks's words. How dare he order me to attack the only other creature of my kind? The only that I know of, so far, I dare not hope there might be more. I'm not as much letting go but diving into the black tide with a running jump.

When I resurface, I'm lying in a puddle not entirely composed of mud and rain, with every gun in the vicinity trained at my head, and _Him_ standing just two steps in front of me, one hand resting on his belt, the other… reaching out at me.

With a simple gesture he raises me up, and though he is grabbing me, more or less, by the scruff of my neck, this is the first time, I remember, of standing upright without anyone's hand gripping my arms. A nice feeling.

"Your hips were broken at an early age," He rumbles, "I see you never learned to walk." I nod agreement, but he isn't finished, yet. "What a waste."

A twist of his hand and a white-hot sensation runs along my nerves. My vision shifts. For a moment I can see him, blazing with power like the heart of a supernova; see myself, white dwarf to his brilliance and still much brighter than the dim flickers that are all the other people moving around us.

Then I … dissipate.


	5. Example

_Even hellfire can serve as a source of illumination, if handled properly._

One of the first things they do in MedCorps training, is to weed out the squeamish ones by showing off the works, that is the complete and utter wreckage the human body can be reduced to by enemy action, without killing it outright_. _All of it in real-life (if nameless) case recordings, life-sized, true-color, in all its screaming (actually a good sign, airways still workable), whimpering or moaning, gory glory.

After some two dozens, you are either out of the door, heaving, or you have gotten used to it. The color red, in all its shades, becomes an abstract concept, after enough repetition.

Which is the point where the major in charge of the lecture brings out what I have later heard referred to as _'the barbecue man'_. Third degree burns on most that's left of him – triple amputations, _twice_ above the knee and halfway down the left humerus – heavy damage to the lungs and upper airways, due to inhalation of some superheated gas, internal organs damaged due to massive amounts of heat applied to the outside of the body cavity… a couple of cracked ribs, corresponding to an unchecked fall, barely blip on the radar. If pushed to that most terrible of first aid measures,_ triage_, I would have thrown him straight onto the pile of Too Bad. But that's not the worst part of it. The amputations are too clean (all major blood vessels carefully cauterized), the burns too extensive (for something that's still breathing) to be anything but deliberate. Even the handful of guys, who tried to prove their toughness by cracking jokes about all the previous cases, are silenced by this.

"Just one, sir," one of them says, when the major asks if there are any questions, "what sort of monster does _that_ to a man without putting him out of his misery, afterwards?"

The major looks down his hooked nose, gravely, before responding. "A Jedi," he says, finally.

_Puff,_ there go the last of my childhood illusions about the heroes of the Clone Wars. Should I ever have the honor to meet Darth Vader, I'll have to shake his hand – metaphorically speaking, of course – for his ceaseless efforts in putting an end to those fiends.

"Sir, how long did the patient survive, after this?" another voice asks, cutting through the angry murmurs that erupted all over the lecture room.

"Fourteen years and counting," the major replies, shocking the entire room into silence, once more.


	6. Leader

_This is the proper officer mindset: no qualms to send the men to their deaths in battle, yet as protective as a dragoness with her brood should anyone else dare to offer them harm._

Some unique combination of magnetic field and solar winds made Mgas Four a navigator's nightmare. If you didn't approach perfectly along the field lines and in the solar lee, the planet first fried your sensors and communications, then shields – if there were any – and then, likely as not, anything else that had so far kept the ship from turning into a rather expensive shooting star. If you _did_ follow the right approach, however…well, then Mgas Four was the perfect spot to lie low for a while, or conduct sensitive meetings undisturbed.

A bit too undisturbed, for young Captain Solo's tastes. He had left his Wookiee copilot – long story – to guard his newly acquired ship – longer story – and wandered into the nearby village in hope of a bit of fun; but so far he had merely managed to locate exactly one dive that served alcoholic drinks and that one specialized in the local brew, which did not even merit dirty jokes about watercraft. With a born spacer's indifference to the source of booze, as long as it _was_ booze, he had swallowed the stuff, but after one glass he was ready to admit defeat and head home to the ship. Of course, at that exact moment, a commotion broke out at the opposite side of the settlement.

At first glance, it looked as if some hunters were returning with one of the fiercer examples of the local wildlife. A closer look, however, taken after pushing through the half anxious, half expectant crowd, soon disabused him of the notion. The assumed hunters might be just that, but the twisting, gleaming, black thing they dragged along in a primitive net, was neither wildlife, nor native to the planet.

A TIE-pilot, life-support helmet still in place, if a little worse for wear.

Solo couldn't help but feel a spike of sympathy, he knew from personal experience how hot and suffocating the damned bucket was under atmospheric conditions, before realizing that to keep the helmet on was, from a purely practical point of view, a stroke of genius – keeping the prisoner both uncomfortable and dehumanized by the simple expedient of _not _doing something. It just was the sort of genius he didn't like very much.

From the sound of the mob, the poor bastard's problems wouldn't last much longer, though, and the freighter captain started to push back through the milling masses. Public executions had never been his style of entertainment, and the times where the unseen face beneath the black visor might have been a friend's – or even his own – were still too fresh on his memories.

"They burned our homes," a shrill voice shouted over the general din, and the cheers turned into more than a dozen place and planet names, before the first voice cut in again, with "now it's time to even the scales!" and the mob erupted into chants of "Burn him, burn him, burn him!"

Captain Solo turned back, his belly filled with dread. Some of the names he could identify as former victims of orbital bombardment – though some of them had not seen action since the Clone Wars, if he remembered correctly – and Mgas Four might be just the place for refugees who never wanted to meet the Empire again. Except to inflict some revenge. Right enough, the black-armored man was dragged towards the edge of the settlement, where a few dozen stout posts, arranged in long rows, supported lines hung with something unidentifiable drying in wind and sun. He was tied up upright against one of those posts and firewood and kindling piled around his feet. The man had not put up much resistance so far, but now he started to fight against his bonds, his screams muffled by the airtight helmet.

Solo closed his eyes, he couldn't watch this. A crescendo in the jeers jolted him back, a torch had been applied to the heap of brushwood and first little flames were tentatively licking around the half buried legs. He couldn't …The suits were designed not to catch when a flame touched them, radiation-proof against pretty much anything short of laser-cannons and had internal temperature controls – but those were meant to keep up with the body's own heat generation, not an external heat source. Meaning, that while mere firewood wouldn't damage the suit, it could very well roast the man inside it. He couldn't watch this.

The blaster fell into his hand, heavy but _right_ in a way he couldn't describe, and he pulled the trigger before his common sense caught up with the sudden impulse and talked him out of it. A bolt of plasma and the bound man slumped, singed plastoid masked in the wood smoke. The mob fell eerily silent.

"What have you done?" several voices hissed.

"I'm sure no friend of the Empire, pals, but no one gets burned alive on my watch."

Finger still on the trigger he backed away, a reassuring wall at his back until something flickered in the corner of his eye and…

Darkness.

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He came to, sluggishly, with the curious sensation of standing upright. Tight ropes digging into his chest, thighs and ankles strengthened the odd impression and then adrenalin jolted him awake, as memories rushed in. Had he…, had they…, was he about to provide the entertainment he had spoiled with his impulsive act? Titanic effort pried his eyelids open, though it didn't lift his head off his chest, for the time being. Enough to ascertain that he was indeed tied to a pole the way the dead pilot had been, but without any kindling at his feet. Solo spared a moment to offer a prayer of thanks to any entity that might listen, then tried to focus his pounding head on something closer to home. Like the garbled noises around him. Teeth-grinding concentration dissolved them into several muffled voices threatening all kinds of terrible retribution, directed at the villagers.

_Huh?_ That didn't make much sense, as far as he remembered. Another burst of adrenalin and willpower finally allowed him to lift his head, to find four other TIE-pilots keeping him – and their dead comrade – company at the poles, with firewood being stacked around their feet. A fifth black-armored figure was lying spread-eagled on the ground between them, a couple of villagers crouching over it and… the young spacer swallowed bile. The man was being staked out_, literally_, with metal spikes being driven through his legs and forearms.

Squadron leader, he knew without a doubt, both for getting singled out for an even nastier death and for the other pilots' fierce, if futile, protectiveness. Kindling was piled up on the leader's hands and feet, careful not to reach past mid-forearm or -calf, the better to ensure that the man would be dieing by inches. With the kindling alight, the villagers stepped away, satisfied with their grisly work, and Solo found his own voice adding damnation to the half-strangled chorus.

"If you don't shoot him this very moment, you're all deader than dead." He drew a deep breath and choked on the smoke rising from various fires.

"Oh, no," disconcerting satisfaction tinted that voice, the same, the young captain assumed, that had started the shouts for fiery retribution in the first place, "when he wakes, it'll be too late, he must focus to act, and the burns will keep him too occupied for that."

Somehow, Solo didn't think it would be so easy to escape the wrath of one Dark Lord of the Sith. Though, he had to admit, he had never expected to see said Sithlord in such a precarious situation, at all. Mgas Four's nightmarish magnetosphere must have outdone itself to take the Dark Lord out for the count for so long.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when the sticks atop the nearest hand twitched slightly, in a way that settling embers could not fully account for.

_Uh-oh._

For a moment nothing else happened, but just when he thought that his eyes had been playing tricks on him, after all, every single piece of burning wood within sight coalesced into a glowing mass above the Sithlord. The jeering mob fell silent.

And the mass turned into red-hot shrapnel.

Captain Solo closed his eyes. Burning splinters sliced past him without touching him, but given the screams behind him, he wished they hadn't missed. Something substantially heavier swished past him, something hissed like a forcefield coming to life and the screams quickly receded. Not all of them, though. The weak, gasping, out-of-the-fight-and-slowly-dieing-in-agony ones did not.

He swallowed bile, again.

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Heavy steps approaching caused him to open his eyes again. A blood-red blade came into his range of vision, and he braced for the killing blow, hoping against hope that it would actually be that and not a slice that left him maimed and screaming like the rest of them. It wasn't either.

Instead a gloved – still slightly smoking – fist pushed his chin up and a raspy growl demanded to know, "Why are you here?"

Lying, the freighter captain instinctively knew, would be a very bad idea. The truth, on the other hand, was probably fatal. But he wasn't about to start groveling, now.

"I shot the pilot they were about to burn first."

"Why?"

"No one gets burned alive on my watch."

"A man of principles, among this scum." Solo wasn't sure if that was a compliment or sarcasm, but the sizzling blade coming down precluded any further line of thought in that direction.

The ropes securing him against the pole fell away, ends smoking.

"Uh, thanks," he didn't get any further before the crimson saber gestured him aside.

The young captain found himself herded towards the nearest of the bound pilots, hanging slackly in the ropes that held him up. A quick glance around ascertained that the rest of the squad was in no better shape.

Sithspit! What had happened to them while he wasn't looking?

"They are not in pain, at the moment," the raspy growl cut across his thoughts – or maybe answered them, Solo didn't want to think about it too hard. "Hold them, so they will not fall, while I cut them loose."

Four bodies carefully lowered to the ground later, the sizzling blade was finally extinguished and the freighter captain almost slumped to the ground in relief.

He gestured at the injured men. "Ah, I'll see if I find some med…" he started, before he was cut off, once more.

"That won't be necessary." The black, towering figure seemed to consider Solo for a moment, making the young captain wonder if he had just outlived his usefulness. "Your intervention was appreciated." The black helmet dipped for the tiniest nod and the captain found himself bowing back. "You are free to leave."

"Yessir!" He didn't need to be told twice. He sketched a salute, whirled and departed, not – quite – at a run.

Before he dove into the alleyway that would lead him back to his ship by the shortest route available, Captain Solo ventured a last look back. Lord Vader was still standing as he had left him, motionless but vigilant, amid his unconscious pilots.

The sight was disturbingly reminiscent both of a dark idol, surrounded by slain sacrifices – and some alien predator protecting its cubs.

**

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**

A/N: I wrote the last sentence first, and then I had to come up with a matching storyline. Does it work?


	7. Designation

A/N: Because people asked repeatedly, here some clarification: if you don't see a name you recognize, it's an OC. The little boy from _Monster_ or the girl from _Beacon_ – all one of those people you have never heard of before and probably never will hear of, again. There is only one exception, the young officer in _Justification_. His name you will most certainly have heard before.

**

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**

_If we called our angels devils and our devils angels, we would change the meaning of the word, but also the meaning of the thing. Such is the nature of a name._

Traditions older than space travel demanded that a ship should always be considered a female entity. And while the Navy Board religiously stuck to principles older than true sentience when it came to the naming of crafts in the Imperial Navy – namely (pun intended) that a proper war-name should strike terror into the hearts of anyone who heard it – crew names differed substantially from the official usage. Whenever _Avenger_ and _Devastator_ assumed orbit around their respective stations, to those in the know, _Ava_ and _Diva_ were coming home.

Contrary to what some bureaucrats, safely ensconced in some far-away office, might assume, the nicknames were by no means meant to downplay the destructive potential of the ships. Species all over the galaxy were in agreement, after all, that a properly enraged female was more dangerous than any male. Everyone with a shred of experience in these matters also understood that ships – like females in general – were more agreeable if shown appropriate attention. There was no telling what a captain thought, when he put his hand on a control panel, occasionally, in a gesture that might or might not have been a pat; but there was many a technician faced with a recalcitrant part of his ship that pleaded, "Talk to me, girl, tell me what's wrong with you." And who could count the gunners leaning over their consoles, whispering, "That's it, baby, give 'em hell!"

All in all, it was more or less inevitable, that the new Flagship of the Fleets, monstrous even by the standards of her kind, would be dubbed _Cutie_, by the multitudes that built and crewed her, as soon as the intended name had been leaked_._

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On the evening after the newly installed main reactors had been test-fired for the first time, leaving the half-completed ship supporting itself at least partially by its own power source – a moment generally recognized amongst ship-yard personnel as the one when the ship became an entity in her own rights – the foreman of the No. 1 construction unit solemnly poured a glass of sparkling Glova wine onto the deckplates of the engine room, where heat and vibrations given off by the nearby reactors caused the alcoholic liquid to evaporate so quickly that the plating seemed to swallow the drink.

"To the awe-inspiring _Lady Ex_," he intoned ceremoniously, "known to her friends as_ Cutie._ Most terrifying lady I ever hope to meet. May your career be long and glorious, my lass!"

"To the_ Cutie_," the rest of the assembled crew echoed, emptying their own glasses – though not onto the floor.

None of the gathered men – and rare alien – noticed a tall, dark shadow on a gantry high above them, one hand splayed, almost caressingly, against a bulkhead. If the ship herself felt any connection to the man who had had considerable part in designing her, there was no obvious sign. Nor was there any indication if the man ultimately meant to be her master preferred to think of the gigantic war machine as _Cutie_ or the more dignified _Lady Ex_ or possibly even her official designation.

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In the years to come, though, the tech crew – most likely to call a ship by her given name, so to speak – found, to their immense relief, that the Supreme Commander tended to ignore the occasional slip of tongue within his – uncannily far-reaching – hearing.

Among the units assigned to the fighter decks, there was even a rumor about the Sithlord's personal TIE-Advanced – a fighter his lordship not only took to battle but sporadically would tinker with himself. There were those who swore that his lordship not only talked to the TIE the way any good mechanic would, but that he called the deadly little craft _Angel_.


	8. Pressure

Flat out Imperial – consider yourselves warned.

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**

_The true substance of our innermost being can not be realized under normal conditions. Only under extreme pressure, we find whether we are meant to be diamonds or dust._

Scuttlebutt calls her the ISD _'Death or Glory'_. Technically speaking, it ought to be the **SSD** _'Death or Glory'_ by now, but as the ship is brand-new and the title hereditary, going back to the very first time the Dark Lord has set his booted feet on the deck of a battleship and declared it his flagship, scuttlebutt may take a bit to catch up. Anyway, it fits. There are only two ways off the ship, a substantial promotion, most likely your own command – or a bodybag. I still suspect that my transfer to the _Executor_ was Commander Torrel getting back at me for turning him down.

Though, in a ship the size of a small city – by anyone's standards but Coruscant's – I didn't expect anyone but the bridge crew and a few select frontline troops to come into any closer contact with his lordship. So cue my icy, icy surprise, when, not two month into my new assignment, someone swept into the lab in the middle of my shift, literally swept, with a presence like a tidal wave surging past, and when I turned I found two meters of black armor breathing down on me.

I snapped to attention by sheer reflex, but when a deep rumble demanded to know, "What are you doing, Lieutenant?" I found my mind fatally blank.

The plasma flux analyzer, I'd been working on, chose this moment to announce fresh results, I thought _'Damned analyzer, _now'_s really lousy timing'_, but somewhere around _analyzer_ my brain rebooted, and I was able to give a satisfying account of my current task.

His lordship listened for a minute, snapped off a surprisingly astute question for someone who does not spent his days steeped in plasma physics, and then swept past with a curt "Carry on."

He toured the lab for maybe fifteen minutes, stretching towards eternity for each of the hapless officers that caught his attention, then vanished again, as quickly and mysteriously as he had appeared. Everyone breathed a collective breathe of relief, but when I tentatively asked the officer on duty if there was any particular reason for this unexpected inspection, he shrugged and said, utterly unapologetic for having let me walk right into that one, "Lord Vader likes to weed out anyone who can not function under pressure, _before_ they wind up in a really serious situation."

'_And take somebody with them, with their mistakes'_ is implied in his tone. I'm fine with that principle, I really am, but when the Dark Lord weeds you out, you _stay_ out. As in, get off the ship. And not by promotion, either.

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_Function under pressure_ means to snap off the proper salute at the commander who was a lieutenant when you last saw him, mere hours ago. Though in that particular case, I didn't mind much. Firs is easy to treat with respect, unlike his predecessor, Sioms, who was a dyed-in-the-wool opportunist – and, thanks to a swiped security vid, continues to serve the department as an object lesson about how you don't talk back to his lordship, if you value your life, but you don't butter up to him, either. He tried to dazzle the Dark Lord with an impressive-sounding but mostly nonsensical tirade about his work. His lordship listened for a moment, cut in with a sharp "Don't lie to me," and when Sioms tried to salvage the situation with a drippy piece of sycophantism, he was brushed aside impatiently.

_Function under pressure_ means to keep on your toes, no matter your rank or current occupation, as his lordship brooks no failure, by anyone. No station aboard is safe from his ominous presence, he haunts the entire ship from bridge to keel, from stern to stem, and you never can be sure where he'll turn up next. The entire crew has grown as accustomed to the possibility of sudden death with little to no forewarning as the TIE-pilots are – and as aware of the fact that proper preparations and constant vigilance can at least ameliorate the risk. Despite the personal implications, I cannot find this inappropriate for a frontline ship.

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_Function under pressure_. An excellent mantra to keep your wits together, when you find yourself unexpectedly tangled around a Sithlord's armored legs. One moment I was checking my gear, flattening myself subconsciously against the storage compartment to clear the way for his lordship sweeping towards the cockpit after a few last orders to the troopers in the back; the next the ship jumps towards hyperspace _but not into it_, pushing thousands of gees without proper synchronization, and while the inertia dampeners catch enough to ensure that (a) the ship holds together and (b) its occupants aren't instantly turned into red paste, everyone still gets smashed into the rear wall.

Hard.

Everyone but the Dark Lord – and myself, seeing how I hit him within the first meter of the way back. My ribs and one shoulder hurt like hell from the impact, but contrary to an irrational expectation, actual physical contact doesn't feel any different from an ordinary armored trooper. Somehow I anticipated something like a Holden coupling, so searingly cold you can lose a hand when you touch it. With lightspeed putting an irrevocable end to acceleration without the hyperdrive, gravity quickly wins out against inertia. The Dark Lord stops whatever he was doing to keep in place, reaches down and pulls me off his feet.

"Follow me," he snaps, before brushing the cockpit doors aside and storming in. First thing I make out beyond the swirling cape is the pilot, dead, with half of his head missing. Second is the instrument panel burning brightly. I stare in mesmerized astonishment for a moment, unused to the sight of open flames which the fire suppression system should have smothered immediately, before the heavy cape comes down on them, suffocating the flames just as effectively.

"Secure this man," comes the next order, and I turn to find the copilot slumped in his seat but still in one piece.

"Yes, milord." As a science officer I do not habitually carry restrains in my pockets, but the troops in the back should have some. I whirl and run back into the main cabin.

_Function under pressure_, I repeat to myself, _function under pressure_. The pile of limp bodies at the back wall looks smaller than I would have expected from the number of people involved, and I can only hope that the compression is merely an optical effect. The top layer wears white armor, fortunate for me, a dozen men that were already leaning against the back wall, got crashed into by everybody else and slumped across the rest when gravity regained the floor, buried to the hips. I find restrains, hurry back into the cockpit and slap them on the unconscious copilot.

His lordship has both hands buried in a jagged, still sizzling hole in the instrument panel, furiously salvaging controls. Most admirals – not speaking of moffs and other more political ranks – I wouldn't want to see within ten steps of an emergency repair, but Vader seems to know what he is doing. Scuttlebutt has it that his lordship can turn a bucket of random spare parts into something capable of atmospheric re-entry – and then steer it down. There are compilations of optical scanner data pulled from the sensors of his personal TIE-squadron, that get passed around like something a lot more illicit and make anyone who knows piloting go "Holy shit!"; but the idea of the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces actually getting his hands dirty with repairs seemed so odd, that I dismissed it as irrelevant. _Damn, am I glad to be wrong._

"Can you pilot?" he growls, without looking up.

"I passed the obligatory courses at the Academy, milord." I'm Navy, after all. And yet…I swallow heavily, but Agur's bloated sun is approaching rapidly and in a few minutes I'll be dead anyway, so I continue, "My instructor advised me not to try and make a career out of it."

"It will do." An unidentifiable mess of molten circuitry is pulled from the ruined console, and I can see the black gloves torn and partly burned, glinting metal moving underneath. "There are eleven survivors in the back. You have three minutes to move as many as possible into the cockpit."

"Yes, milord." Eleven. Out of twenty-five troops plus a dozen officers, most of them SciCorps like me. Most of them friends of mine. And I thought, finding out whether Agur Seven was perpetrating tax fraud on a truly astronomical scale or delivering large amounts of ores to the Rebellion – or any combination of the two – was going to be a boring mission, my greatest worry the fact that I had inexplicably wound up on the same shuttle as a just as bored Sithlord.

_Function under pressure. _I fumble with the first helmet, relieved to find it attached by the same principles as the standard space suit I'm used to. No use to check for a pulse here, the uncovered head slumps back loosely, neck snapped inside the armor. I push the corpse aside as far as possible, fingers frantically moving towards the next. Uniformed corpse, armored corpse, groaning body. I drag Commander Firs free from the pile and finally get some reaction from a half buried trooper, who grabs my hand with a hard grip when I try to remove his helmet.

"Get yourself out of the pile, then move the injured into the cockpit. Move it, trooper!" I shout at the dazed man and he obeys.

I have four walking wounded, all of them armored troopers, and five other survivors before my time runs out, one trooper that drowned face-down in his helmet after a head-injury and little Ensign Guati, hands worn to bloody claws, crushed and suffocated at the very bottom of the pile. I don't usually see the point of advanced interrogations beyond the fact-finding, which is more elegantly achieved by truth serums, in my opinion, but looking at the girl's discolored face… when Vader goes to take the traitorous copilot apart, I want to be right behind him, holding his cape.

"Time's up, Lieutenant," the Dark Lord snaps, as I shove the pair of troops dragging the last survivor into the already very cramped cockpit. The hatch cycles shut and my ears pop with the sudden increase of air pressure, making me realize that the main cabin must have been losing atmosphere. _Function under pressure – _I stifle a near-hysterical urge to laugh.

His lordship nods towards the now vacant copilot chair, and I strap myself in, astonished beyond words by the fact that the ship seems to obey – ever so slightly – to the controls under his hands.

We are no longer heading straight into the sun. That's marvelous, but the elation only holds until I tear my eyes away from the viewscreen and take a closer look at the displays before me, desperately trying to recall the configuration of a _Lambda_'s instrument panel. The black helmet turns fractionally towards me, but before his lordship can say anything, the elusive memory flares up brilliantly in my mind, and I busy myself with identifying what we still have and what we need.

There are more red lights than green in front of me and more dead displays than lights. Hyperdrive is gone – _well, duh_ – as are communications and most of the sensors_._ Armaments are down to the stern guns – which are completely useless without operational sensors – and the ominous lack of input from pretty much anything located in the wings or near the hinges, tells me that inertia did bad things to the outlying parts of the ship during our extreme acceleration. That includes shields and the maneuvering thrusters, and the Emergency Disengage is red-lighted, too, presumably for the same reasons.

I spare a moment to pat the panel before me, mouthing _'Good girl, hold together for just a little longer'_, to ward off the catastrophic structural failure that only phenomenally good luck – and Cygnus's diligent construction work – has kept off, so far. But luck and diligence can only go so far, I'm pretty sure a tractor beam trying to lock onto the crippled ship would tear it to pieces. Not to speak of air drag upon attempted reentry on anything with more than the slightest wisps of atmosphere.

_Function under pressure. _On the plus side, the repulsors seems to be working fine, ironically enough, for what good they'll do us without functioning landing gear and, more importantly, the ability to fold the wings back into docking mode; and the main engines are firmly red-lined but still operational, too. I take a closer look at the fluctuating output of the ion engines when I catch a movement of the Dark Lord's hands from the corner of my eye, perfectly in tandem with the fluctuation.

Stars, his lordship is compensating for the defunct maneuvering thrusters by varying the output between the two parts of the twin engine. I catch my jaw off the floor, swallow my awe and take a closer look. I'm rather certain that the controls, in the original configuration, did not allow for that sort of manipulation. Somewhere in his repairs, the Dark Lord must have bypassed the auto-regulation unit that balances the two engines, normally.

"You will give me maximum thrust reversal, on my command," the Sithlord cuts through my musings.

"Yes, milord." The read-outs are red, though, so I report dutifully, "Thrust reversers show System Test Failure."

"They will work, "his lordship decrees, and who am I – or the engine – to disagree.

Agur Five's largest moon looms up suddenly, and with another twitch of uneven engine thrust, Lord Vader steers the crippled ship into a degenerating orbit around the dusty ball of rock.

"Reverse in three, two, one, now!"

I push the lever up and white-hot ion streams blaze across the cockpit viewscreen. That's not what is supposed to happen, according to the manual, so the reversers took some damage, too, but besides scouring the hull, the streams do cause a rapid loss of speed. Gravity reaches out for us and we begin to fall.

"Undo reverse!"

I pull the lever back. Alternating forward and reverse thrust gets us down to a few hundred meters above a vast dusty plain, falling towards it at a moderate angle.

"Repulsors!" comes the sharp order and I slam my hand down on the respective switch before realizing that the repulsors of a shuttle have an effective range of some dozens of meters, not hundreds.

I'm not entirely clear about what happened next. We skip, like a flat stone across water, for at least a hundred kilometers across the dusty plain, skim a rock spur and hurtle, head over heels, for at least as long, before our momentum is fully spent. Torn metal screams as the wings are shorn off, and somewhere in between a piece of rock hurtles towards me, seen coming for a split-second before it crashes through the viewscreen, but by some miracle it never hits me in the face.

When the dust has settled, the viewscreens are completely opaque, leaving us blind to the outer world; gravity is very light, provided only by the celestial body we have crashed onto; and the atmosphere is thinner than it should be. Some groaning body has ended up tangled around my feet.

I forcefully unclench my fingers from the yoke at the third try and finally have the time to wonder why I'm not breathing hard vacuum. The Dark Lord has one hand splayed out in a strained looking gesture, and some inner voice tells me that this is all that keeps the atmosphere inside the cockpit from dissipating. I wonder absentmindedly why he would bother. His suit protects him and he might even get to keep the troopers, their armor is not rated space-proof, but will withstand the vacuum for a couple of minutes.

Some half-forgotten emergency procedure has me ask, softly as not to break his lordship's concentration, "Status everyone?" while trying to disengage the crash webbing.

"TK-984, status acceptable."

"TK-3756, status unchanged."

Ominous silence. "TK-6680 doesn't respond," the second voice reports after a moment.

"Check his life signs, but make sure to reseal the helmet afterwards, if he's still alive," I call over my shoulder, fighting with the last stubborn strap.

A muffled "Yessir!", and the litany continues.

I'm barely through with the headcount – everyone inside the cockpit is still alive – when his lordship declares, "The blastshields will hold now, but life support has failed. So, _Sleep!_"

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Everything else I know about this day is just hearsay. Lord Vader pushed everyone aboard, except himself, into an unconsciousness so deep that the bit of oxygen trapped within the cockpit was enough to keep eleven people alive until rescue arrived.

For that someone came up with the idea – some say it was the Captain, some say it was his lordship shoving the thought into the Captain's mind, some say it was someone else entirely – to send one of the Titan dropships to the moon, piloted by two members of Black Squadron, who performed the minor miracle of landing the huge transport atop the remains of the shuttle in such a way that the floor hatch meant for deploying the AT-ATs swallowed the wreck whole, without crushing anything as yet uncrushed.

I came to in the infirmary, with the dubious – and ever spreading – reputation of having flown copilot to Lord Vader in what Firs calls the "Most terrifying piece of flying I've ever seen".

It's not true. All I did was supply a second pair of arms to reach for those controls too seriously damaged on the pilot's side to repair but still viable on the copilot's side. The "Most terrifying piece of flying" was done by someone else. Maybe I can convince people of that fact some day – preferably before someone expects a repeat performance.

What will stay with me, though, for the rest of my life, is the realization that hit me a few days after the fact: if only half of what I have heard about his lordship's suit and powers is true, he could have jumped ship any time he wanted to, with no greater cost to himself but a little time to contemplate the stars, drifting in space before the Executor arrived to pick him up; while the rest of us hurtled to our deaths. To wrestle the damaged ship into a controlled crash-landing was – for him – the far more risky option. Yet, I don't think the alternative ever occurred to him.

**

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**

A/N: Plenty of technobabble, I know. I just felt like it. Physics should work, though – within the rather loose definition of physics as seen in the SW universe – if not, please point out the error.


	9. Reference

There was another story here, but it got out of hand. Check out _Food Scandal_, if you're interested.


	10. Dinner date

_Duty may take the strangest forms, occasionally even that of amusement._

This is a joke!

It has to be.

I mean, there is no way in all Corellian Hells for something that is, for all the official language (_You are hereby required etc., etc._...), basically a dinner date with Lord Vader, to be serious.

Except... It was sent using his lordship's official com-code, is signed by one of his aides, and neither the Sithlord nor the handful of men assigned to the highly responsible job of channeling his lordship's paperwork, including sending off low priority orders on his authority, are known for their excessive sense of humor. And it would take an extremely competent – and rather suicidal – hacker to hijack said com-code, who in turn would probably not waste the opportunity to play juvenile pranks. Which leaves me stuck with an order, straight from the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces, to appear in Hangar Bay 58 at 1900 sharp tomorrow, wearing something that conforms to "_dress code: formal, no uniform_", and accompany the aforementioned Commander to a dinner given in his honor on Ersho Ir.

I reread the message for the umpteenth time, to confirm that yes, it's still there; yes, it's still addressed to me; and yes, the text is still the same and worded in a way that makes alternative interpretations rather hard to accomplish. Then I com Petra.

Senior Tech Chief Petra Tarszum is, as a non-commissioned officer whose workspere lies approximately 5 kilometers from my own station, not the sort of company I, as an astronavigation officer, am likely or even encouraged to keep, but the first unwritten rule of the Navy girls is: _Always look after your own._ Otherwise you get ground up real fast – more than a quarter million men aboard, less than ten thousand women, you do the math. Petra takes those rules very serious. In the loose network spanning the entirety of the _Lady Ex_, she is the undisputed team mom in the clique I hang around with most. Everyone who learns that her name means 'bedrock' in her native language, finds it scarily appropriate.

Ten minutes later I have one-and-a-half meters of Tech Chief pouring over the ominous invitation, reach the same conclusions as I did, and spring into action.

First order, we relocate to Petra's cabin – bigger because non-coms, even at that level, have to share – and hold a proper war council. With about two and a half decades of service, Petra knows someone who knows something for pretty much any occasion. I've seen perhaps half of the faces before.

There is remarkably little jealousy, once the situation has been explained to everyone. Well, his lordship may be technically speaking a bachelor, with a private fortune that exceeds that of several star systems and literally second in power only to the Emperor, but I don't think the term _eligible_ has ever been used in context with his name.

There is, however, a tiny bit of doubt floating around. "No offence, darling," a tall, thin lady from Decryptions says, "but why you?"

A very good question – I'm happy enough with my appearance, but I know my face is more interesting than conventionally beautiful, and while I'm fit as per regulations and have enough curves to be not mistaken for a male, I'm not exactly typical arm-candy material.

I shrug. "Be sure to tell me if you find out."

The lady takes that for a challenge – solving puzzles is a passion turned job description for her, after all – and by combining the forces of an astronavigator, a medic with a fascination for anthropology and an administrative clerk from Supplies, that went to the Academy with one of Vader's aides, she has a credible theory within twenty hours.

The rest begins preparations. Starting with: what to wear? I have the jewelry for that kind of occasion, but merely by chance, found it on my last shore leave. Cost me one month's pay – _so what, I don't have to support a family with what I earn, and while the Navy provides bed and board, I can indulge myself, occasionally._ I didn't foresee the need to pack an evening gown, though, as a serving officer that's what the dress uniform is for. But this is Vader's flagship, and the _Lady Ex_ never delivers anything but the best.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

The next evening, at 1730, finds me in a tech ready room near the hangars, surrounded by yet another set of only half familiar faces, and pretty much in the same situation as a dress-up doll at a little girls party. Input on my part isn't much asked for, autonomous movement very much frowned upon, and much fun is had by anyone but me – they get to feed their much starved sense of girlishness, but I get dinner with Lord _kriffing_ Vader, who is not only my superior officer – if so many levels above me you can barely see him on a clear day – but a Sithlord with a rather strict _No Failures_ policy, and in the last few days, scuttlebutt has been... tense.

I do not presume to question His Majesty's wisdom, but while the Emperor's right hand man may be perfectly qualified to sign a major treaty, and to arrive for the aforementioned signing in 19 km worth of death and destruction has its merits, too – the Ershoi have a thing for military prowess – to assign Darth Vader to a diplomatic mission – and a fancy dinner, to boot – is putting the Sithlord off-balance. And _that_ is a bit hard on the crew.

On the plus side, though, if the worst comes to pass, at least I will make a pretty looking corpse.

My hair, always a deep bronze with copper highlights, now resembles the highly polished versions of said metals. It's done up in what Kora from Supplies calls an _Alderaani Lily Twist_ – I'll have to take her word on that – something that involves a complicated twist, a number of small braids and… let's just say it looks like three people just spent the better part of an hour working on it.

My make-up, on the other hand, though the result of just as much labor, looks barely there. Granted, my complexion is usually not quite that perfect nor my cheekbones as chiseled, but the only obvious touch of color lies around my eyes, turning their usual hazel into almost amber.

The color compliments the dress. It's shimmer-silk and a vibrant maroon, a rich, warm autumn color that should contrast nicely with the shades of grey of the dress uniforms, without being overly garish. With V-neck neck-holder and a half-bared back, it fits snugly from throat to waist, then flares into a wide skirt, ending at mid-calf. I have no idea whose it is. Petra produced it without comment, but then, the _Lady Ex_ has workshops that can customize everything up to hull-strength armor. For all I know, it might have started the day as window drapes in one of the – never used since the ship's maiden voyage – guest suites just beneath the bridge. A see-through stole of the same color covers my arms and back, and matching shoes, with moderately high heels, complete the ensemble.

A stream of myriads of tiny silver beads pools across my collarbone, and forms droplets hanging from my ears, catching the color of the dress as a rivulet of molten metal.

The dropping jaw of the stormtrooper sergeant that has been set to the task of escorting me to the hangar bay, to ensure the unusual outfit won't cause any… accidents on the way, confirms the image the full-length mirror tried to convey. Petra hisses like an enraged swan, and her significant other, Master Sergeant Zech Ijuha stiffens into parade-grade posture and formally holds out his arm. The man is as tall as she is diminutive, as laid-back as she's fierce – the whole opposites attracts gamut. In his full white armor he makes for an impressive escort, and his size gives me a first try run for walking next to Lord Vader.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

The most direct route to Hangar Bay 58 makes use of a tech elevator within the hangar itself, that is entered from a platform near the ceiling. I catch a fleeting glimpse of a solid knot of grey near Lord Vader's personal shuttle, and my first impression – nothing concrete, just a bit of body language and plenty of intuition – is that the rest of tonight's deputation is just as enthusiastic about the whole charade as I am – or, apparently, his lordship. The notion is strangely reassuring.

"Eyes left, Admiral, our dinner date is here," is the first thing I hear when we step onto the hangar floor. It creates the second impression, that some members of the congregation of high-ranking officers in full dress uniform are hell-bent on making the best of the unwelcome order to attend a party. None of them is on the blacklist of men-a-smart-girl-keeps-away-from-when-he's-drunk, thankfully, nor on the (much shorter) blacklist of men-a-smart-girl-keeps-away-from-period (whatever else their faults might be, but guys on the latter list all seem to share a talent of getting into the Dark Lord's way while he's in one of his moods).

The voice belongs to General Veers, highest-ranking officer present – Admiral Piett, right next to him, has the same level of rank but less seniority – who promptly gives me a once-over as thorough – and about as lewd – as any troop inspection he might do. I return the favor, if a bit more subtly – I hope. There are about equal parts of blood and adrenaline running through my veins right now, making me feel a bit… off. For a man more than a decade my senior, the general looks pretty sharp in his dress greys, adorned with battle honors and other decorations in every color of the rainbow. The admiral, on the other hand, looks dignified. His collection is not quite as extensive, but impressive, too. The officers in the background display more of the same in toned-down versions.

The inspection completed, Veers nods approval, dismisses the stormtrooper beside me – by name, despite the helmet – and turns towards Piett. "I can see why the Navy keeps labeling so many posts as _'non-combat positions'_. But now, Firmus, if you'd do the honor…"

First name basis, I note, and confident enough in both the friendship and his authority to use it in front of subordinates – that's rare. Interesting. As is the way Piett shoots the general a wary look, before nodding. He goes for the ladies first approach, while still mentioning my proper rank, leading to the somewhat unique introduction of "Lieutenant Cudak, may I present General Veers," slight bow from said general, which I return, "Colonel Adge, Commodor…", nine in all, who all outrank me. Vastly. I know exactly one of them by sight, Captain Bjoseu is occasionally the commanding officer of the secondary bridge. _Oh joy._

"And where does the good admiral here hide you away, usually, Lieutenant?" If I didn't know better, I would say the general has a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.

"Please, Max, that was uncalled for, you make it sound as if I'm keeping an illicit harem, or something," Piett protests, before I can say something.

There _is_ mischief in Veers' eyes, definitely, when he catches my eyes for a moment before replying, lightly, "Firmus, half of the Army's rumor mill is running on speculations about the Navy officers' harems. As an Admiral you're entitled to at least, uh, twenty-five I think is the latest estimate. That right, Colonel?"

"Twenty-six, sir," the next lower Army officer corrects, absolutely dead-pan, "don't forget the Flagship of the Fleets bonus, sir."

The admiral has spent too much time in space to have enough of a tan to hide the blush creeping over his face.

"That's not right!" he starts, and though I'd call it very bad style, usually, to make jokes on a fellow officer's expense in front of said officer's subordinates, thanks to the general's antics I'm now trying hard not to laugh, instead of not to panic. Which was probably the idea.

The feeling holds until I see the assorted officers suddenly stiffen up to parade-grade attention, and hear the _in_famous ventilator hiss behind me. I turn – in high-heels and a neckholder dress my posture is already as straight as it gets – and find Lord Vader giving me a once-over, not unlike the one General Veers has given me a minute before.

The Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces pronounces the sight that greets him "Adequate" and holds out his arm. As compliments go, I've heard better, but never from so high up, so I join the collective breath of relief and take the offered appendage with only minimal delay. There's no discernible difference between his lordship's armored arm and that of the stormtrooper I held before, and some of my anxiety fades.

I manage the ten steps to the nearby shuttle, then up the ramp and into the main cabin without accident. Lord Vader leads me to a seat, I get a nod and then the Sithlord retreats into the cockpit.

The Navy officers share looks and start eyeing the crash webbing speculatively, though that would utterly ruin the pristine crispness of their uniforms. "Safer to let him vent some steam" somebody mutters, "Triple reinforced inertia dampeners, should keep up with the g-forces" says another one, and then Piett advises no one in particular to "keep away from the windows if you intend to enjoy that fancy dinner waiting planetside."

The Army immediately closes ranks. "We all have experience with dropships," Veers gives back somewhat acerbically, "I think, we can stand a little shuttle ride."

"You have never seen Lord Vader fly, Max, " the admiral replies evenly, "I have, regularly, and it is my professional opinion, that his lordship flies every vessel, he gets his hands on, like he's trying to win the Boonta Eve Classic." He nods at the viewscreen behind him, "Be my guest, but the sight of continents screaming past in a corkscrew, is not for the weak of stomach."

The general still looks dubious. "Come on, Firmus, it can't be that bad."

"Max, if his lordship ever gets it into his mind to take direct control of the Lady Ex, he'll do barrel rolls in her."

Veers actually chuckles at that. "Please, Admiral, even an old dirt-pounder like me knows you can't do that with a ship of that size."

"Impossible is not part of his lordship's vocabulary," Piett gives back, and there is no viable comeback to that.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

I spend the first part of the flight wondering if the two highest-ranking officers aboard are consciously trying to behave like poster-boys of their respective service branches – forward Army man vs. laid-back Navy – or if they chose their careers because each fit their pre-existing characteristics.

I snap out of my musings when the nearer object of my considerations turns towards me.

"Do you know why you are here, Lieutenant?" If I didn't know better, I'd say the admiral is fishing for facts, because he wasn't told, either. He obviously got a list of personnel assigned for this mission – scuttlebutt calls him conscientious to the point of pedantism, but no admiral knows everyone under his command, with a crew of more than a quarter million on the _Lady Ex_ alone – but perhaps not the reasons for said assignments.

"My orders contained no explanation, sir," I reply carefully.

He doesn't buy it. "You must have formed a theory."

"Yes, sir. The Ershoi have an archaic tradition, that for a first meeting of two major powers, each party's leader must be accompanied by a young female of his household, as a token of goodwill. The crew of the flagship counting as Lord Vader's _'household'_, in this case, I suppose." I do not mention that, while I'm an officer – can't have a grease monkey or a glorified clerk at an official dinner, might not show the proper manners – and match the age requirement, my _personal_ presence is mostly owed to Vader's rather stringent rules of what he does NOT want for company. She must NOT be petite, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Nor blonde and blue-eyed, and flaming redheads are a no-go, too. Which leaves the medium brunettes, and my name is pretty far to the front of the aurebesh.

There is a moment of stunned silence before the general says something that definitely isn't Basic.

"I'm going to repeat myself," he continues more intelligible, "where do you hide these girls, Firmus? They give Iceheart's goons a run for their money."

"Navy girls," the admiral says cryptically, in a tone that's equal parts condescension for the poor, deprived Army folks and pride in his own. Makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.

Veers calls his friend something else I can't identify the language of, before turning ostentatiously away from him and towards me. "You never answered my question, Lieutenant."

"Astronavigation, Secondary bridge, sir."

His eyebrows shoot up at astronavigation – a standard reaction, it's not a very girly occupation, _but yes general, I followed the cool siren song of numbers into the abstract world of astronavigation, deal with it!_

To his credit, Veers makes no comment, but turns lightly back to Piett "Good taste in your replacement, Firmus."

I almost smile. Secondary bridge (classified a non-combat position because the nearest piece of hull is several hundred meters away) takes over in the unlikely case that the main bridge – and hence the admiral – is incapacitated, and for the first few months no one lets forget you that your job is to keep things working if everyone else is dead.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

My opposite number is barely an adult, very pretty – and scared nearly out of her mind. I instantly feel much assured. The leader of the Ershoi deputation gives introductions for everyone except his token of goodwill; Lord Vader at least gives my name if not my rank. Then the respective escorts change hands, so to speak, and the poor kid grows even paler, against all likelihood, when his lordship, perfectly civil, takes her arm.

The utter boor at my arm continues to treat me as purely ornamental – not a single word or glance in my direction – while we enter a great ballroom and aperitifs are served. I take the least potent of the alcoholic ones, I certainly don't want to get drunk, but being totally ignored is not something I'll tolerate all evening while stone-sober. After an endless half-hour of small-talk – between my escort and Lord Vader, no other participants required – dinner is served.

Seating arrangements give Lord Vader the place of honor, naturally, at the head of the table next to the Ershoi leader and with their token of goodwill on his other side. It places me between the aforementioned leader and his second in command, and drapes the rest of both parties alternatingly along the table, aligned by their respective ranks. The Ershoi leader keeps on ignoring me and focuses his entire attention on Lord Vader, who looms – uneatingly, of course – over the assembly, granting him curt replies. His lordship's one try to address the girl beside him almost ended with her fainting, which leaves Veers, on her other side to valiantly try and pick up the slack. His opposite number is an elder general with little interest in conversation until I hit the accidental strike of genius and have him explain the gigantic battle mural in the entrance hall, which leads to an exhaustive military history lesson, complete with dioramas sculpted from various food items, over the course of the next – eleven, I think – courses. I keep him going with encouraging nods and the occasional intelligent question.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Dinner is over, the bar is open and the previously rigid arrangements of company dissolve. For a kid in an overly elaborate dress, the girl does a decent job of diving for cover – behind me. "How can you stand it? Having... _him_ around all the time?"

My first reaction is, you don't discuss your superior officers – doesn't get much superior – with strangers unless you are really fishing for trouble. My second is, you don't discuss the Emperor's second-in-command, period. _But I'm not here as an officer, am I?_ Still, I'm not really qualified to answer. Except for maybe the highest echelons and perhaps a few select front-line troops the Sithlord is more a force of nature than a person. _And that should do nicely as an explanation, doesn't it? _

"Have you ever been to the engine room of a capital ship?" The girl shakes her head minutely. "No? I highly recommend to do that, if you can manage, it's very educational." Very humbling, too. "The powers that accelerate a mass so large to light speed or beyond are so gigantic that they can be – have to be – carefully harnessed, but never quite contained. There are areas where the slightest misstep is instantly and absolutely lethal. Yet the engine techs step into these areas every day, all part of the job. You get used to it." You can fall in love with it, even, I certainly did, when Petra once allowed me a brief glimpse at the deadly beauty of the plasma torrents dancing at the heart of the _Lady_'s sublight engines. But that would be driving the simile too far, I suppose.

With a couple of drinks under their belts some of the junior members of both deputations find the courage to propose a dance, and with the male to female ratio as unbalanced as it is, I barely get a quiet minute afterwards. I'm very grateful for Lord Vader to depart at the earliest politely possible opportunity, and even lean a bit more heavily onto his arm than is strictly proper – I'm no longer used to high heels, my uniform boots barely have any. If his lordship notices the difference, he gives no sign.

The shuttle-trip back to the Executor is uneventful despite the Sithlord taking the pilot chair, again. In an unexpected display of chivalry, he then walks me to my cabin, where he departs with barely a nod.

I'm too tired to seriously wonder what the rumour mill will make out of that, but my last thought, before falling into bed, is _how much of a bonus is the post of Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces probably worth?_

* * *

Published right next to April's Fools Day for a reason. In a recent discussion I maintained – I still do – that it is not possible to set up an actual dinner date with Lord Vader (not Anakin in a suit, just _Vader_) in a serious story keeping within movie canon. The counter-argument sounded something like "Just because _you_ can't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done…" Well, here you are. It is doable, without resorting to romance (I don't do that), even. But I, personally, don't consider this a _serious_ story.


	11. The Wall

A/N: I felt like something a bit different.

* * *

_Death does accompany this man, adherent, though, not friend. A tool at times, but never loved, a means to bitter end._

There is a wall on Coruscant, black marble, smooth and cold.  
There is a wall on Coruscant, two thousand steps, all told.  
There is a wall on Coruscant, framed by eternal flames.  
There is a wall on Coruscant that bears a million names.

A million names cut into stone, a million men are dead.  
A single name is missing there, just one remains unread.  
Two thousand steps he walks along, to pay his last respects.  
The sole survivor, he's the one that Death always rejects.

He parts the masses milling there, the gawkers drawing back,  
The mourners he just passes by, a wraith clad all in black.  
The memories that haunt their minds, they follow in his wake,  
Reflections staring from the stone, they paid for pride's mistake.

He cannot say he grieves for all, some did deserve no less.  
But countless lives were squandered there, the Emp'ror to impress.  
He halts where few will read the names, where lowest ranks abound,  
The specters growing stronger here, his own mind fertile ground.

Gauntleted fingers touch the stone, reflection reaches back,  
A timeless moment passes by, black resting against black.  
Then on he goes, two thousand steps he walks along the wall,  
Ranks do not matter anymore, his presence honors all.

Some tens of thousands mourners walk along that wall, each day,  
And of those thousands some may scream or cry, in their dismay.  
But most will mutely touch a name – or two, if fate was cruel,  
Their own reflections staring back, from stone lifeless and cool.

There is a wall on Coruscant, black marble, smooth and cold.  
There is a wall on Coruscant, two thousand steps, all told.  
There is a wall on Coruscant, framed by eternal flames.  
There is a wall on Coruscant that bears a million names.

There is a wall on Coruscant, they call the Wall of Death.

* * *

A/N: One of my most favorite depictions of Lord Vader is _Deathstar Reflections_, by WiL-Woods, which can be found at Deviantart. Awesome picture, which inspired these lines.

Let's not forget, however, that the total death count of that particular film was much, _much_ higher….

* * *

There is no wall on Alderaan, just space dust, dark and cold.  
There is no wall on Alderaan, nor ground that could one hold.  
There is no wall on Alderaan, a world gone up in flames.  
There is no wall on Alderaan, to bear two billion names.

Two billion names cast into dust, two billion people dead.  
A handful bear the memories, the farewells left unsaid.  
Some do return to the remains, to pay their last respects,  
Each wondering why they have been the one that Death rejects.

They brave the debris tumbling there, they make their lone way back,  
To leave a token of their love, amidst the silent black.  
The memories that haunt their minds, they follow in their wake,  
Reflections of the past to guard, the future's theirs to make.

One cannot say there's grief for all, some did deserve no less.  
But countless lives were slaughtered here, the Emp'ror to impress.  
Thus, most are missed and dearly so, soft memories abound,  
The specters grow so strong in here, a whole world's burial mound.

Uncounted fingers reach for home, reflection reaches back,  
Lives are recalled and loves affirmed that died in the attack.  
A hopeless task as it might seem – two billions to recall –  
Numbers don't matter anymore, the living honor all.

Some hundred thousands mourners take this voyage home, some day.  
And of those thousands some may scream or cry, in their dismay.  
But most will speak their loved ones' names, to whom fate was so cruel,  
Their own reflections staring back, or stones, lifeless and cool.

There is no wall on Alderaan, just space dust, dark and cold.  
There is no wall on Alderaan, nor ground that could one hold.  
There is no wall on Alderaan, a world gone up in flames.  
There is no wall on Alderaan, to bear two billion names.

There is no wall on Alderaan, to call the Wall of Death.

* * *

A/N: Doesn't quite fit in here, I know, but it's a matched pair, and the first one does.


	12. Hold

Warning: contains a character I know mainly by osmosis – I simply fell in love with the concept of someone being impertinent enough to call Lord Vader _'Uncle D'_ **and get away with it!** If I created some OOCness, please point it out and I'll try to correct it.

* * *

_Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, the saying goes. What then, of those persons who worm their way into our innermost hearts – are they enemies or friends?_

"Morning, Uncle D, how are…ugh. Now's a bad time, got it. I'll be back later, no problem."

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

In his line of work, he regularly ran across the obnoxious sort of people who greeted everyone by thumping them heartily on the back – those he could deal with. In fact, he took great pleasure in thumping them right back, and Gunnery Sergeant (DD) Jixton Wrenga had not been Unarmed Combat champion in the Imperial Forces annual inter-branch competition three years running for nothing. They rarely tried it twice.

Then, there were the even more irritating people greeting everyone with a hug and a peck on the cheek – irritating mostly because there were so few attractive young females among them.

There was only one person, though, he had met so far, who would wrap incorporeal fingers around his throat, as soon as he came into view, and kept them there for the duration of the stay – or as Jix had put it, "Uncle D, you're the only one I know, who greets people with a hug and stays hugging them until they are out of the door again."

The immaterial grip had tightened significantly, after that.

"Have you ever heard the expression '_at the end of one's tether'_, Jixton?" Lord Vader had growled back.

"Consider this," a black-gauntleted gesture towards the constricted throat, "the other end of the tether. So you better refrain from pushing me any further."

Jix wouldn't have been a good Corellian if he hadn't taken up the challenge. Ever since he had adopted the hulking Sithlord, he had done what every good nephew would have and made sure that the whole mask-and-swirly-cape shtick didn't go to his uncle's head. Would have been a real shame, if that nice gleamy helmet got stuck on a swollen ego, one day, wouldn't it? And if he was entirely honest about it – something Jix usually managed to avoid – he also felt a sort of perverse satisfaction in the fact that he surely held the all-time record for feeling his lordship's ghostly fingers grab his throat and still living to tell the tale about it.

Most of the time, the grip was not a very hard one, just a reminder of the edge he put the Sithlord on. But then there were days – like today – when he didn't get through a friendly greeting before the invisible chokehold threw him against the nearest bulkhead. Those days, he had learned painfully, you better weathered the storm elsewhere.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Once he was safely outside the suite of rooms, Jix took a moment to slouch against the door and massage his bruised throat, before he pushed himself back to his full height and turned towards the turbolift, intent on killing some time in the nearest mess. People who only saw the boisterous thug never suspected a connection with the Empire, since the long-haired ruffian looked so utterly un-Imperial; but with the pony-tail carefully tucked beneath a uniform cap, the former combat trainer could move about unsuspected in pretty much any Imperial military installation, because he knew exactly how to talk, walk and otherwise behave like their rightful inhabitants.

Jix still wasn't sure, however, what to make of the fact that Vader had given him a Master Sergeant's uniform to wear, in case his agent needed to meet him in person, while the Sithlord was busy as Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces – one rank above the one Jix had held before his court-martial.

Mulling over this puzzle, once again, he nearly walked into the Navy guy – full captain, Vader's best agent noted absently – coming the other way, when the lift arrived. Old habits, carefully revived for the sake of camouflage, made him step aside for the officer and the other man would have passed him with barely a glance. And yet…There wasn't much on this floor that an officer this high in rank would be coming for, and some latent esprit de corps – not towards the Empire as such, merely commiseration with another damn fool working for the same mercurial boss – made him issue a warning.

"Uh, sir, I wouldn't go in there, right now. He's in a bad mood today."

Hazel eyes looked him down with a hint of condescension – or would have, if the captain hadn't been so much shorter than the tall Corellian.

"Sergeant," the man said, in the no-nonsense, yet reassuring tone, the former combat instructor might have used, back in the day, to talk down a green recruit turned skittish by the noise and smell and general excitement of his first live fire exercise, before somebody got hurt, "if his lordship truly was _'in a bad mood'_, as you put it, we would not be having this conversation. Instead, a maintenance droid would have been sent for, to clean up the mess."

_Your funeral, pal, _Jix thought, somewhat stung, as he considered himself to have outgrown the need for such reassurances decades ago_._

"Yessir", he said aloud.

While he waited for the turbolift to return – he had missed it, thanks to his misguided impulse – the former instructor idly considered hijacking a maintenance droid and sending it into Lord Vader's quarters, just to freak out the patronizing captain. He decided against it: Uncle D might not see the humor in the situation, and being a stuffed shirt didn't warrant a death sentence on the first offence – which would automatically follow, if the man was still within reach when the Sithlord met a further provocation, right now.

The lift had just arrived, when the captain bounced off the wall opposite the entrance to Vader's suite of rooms, with enough force to crack bone. Jix's own bruised shoulder ached in sympathy. He watched the Navy man land awkwardly on his bent arms and knees and stay there, gasping and coughing desperately, and blocked the lift, with a sigh.

It was, of course, utterly unbecoming of a sergeant to tell a captain _'I told you so'_, so the Corellian didn't say so very loud, before he strode over pat the man down, with the professional casualness of a man who has seen – and caused – so many hard impacts on the mat (and various other surfaces), that he knows exactly what to look for. Skull, neck and upper spine – check; collar bone – check; shoulder joints – strangled moan and a flinch, but normal range of motion, bruised or sprained, at worst, no dislocation; ribcage – heavy flinch and a groan, but no unnatural give, couple of cracked ribs, just as predicted. He ignored half-choked croaks when he pulled the uninjured arm over his shoulder, to pick the slighter man off the floor, and half led, half carried him to the turbolift.

_Really, what would Uncle D do without me, to tidy up after him, the bodies would just pile up on the floor_, Jix groused silently, while sending the turbolift down to the medical deck. He pushed the still gasping man off the lift before the latter could protest against the manhandling – or thank the incognito agent for his assistance, Jix really didn't care for either – and sped off again, now finally headed for a drink.

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

Five hours and, incidentally, five maintenance droids shattered violently against an increasingly dented wall opposite his quarters later, Lord Vader had calmed to the point where the sixth droid was merely curtly commanded to collect the piled-up wreckage from the corridor outside. After it had deposited its load inside his study, it was sent away, but before the door could slide closed behind it, a familiar figure slipped through it.

Up to his elbows in bent metal, deftly realigning twisted droid parts, the Sithlord didn't even look up to wrap ghostly fingers around his agent's throat. "Your idea, I suppose, Jixton? Or an entirely coincidental outbreak of suicidal tendencies among the ship's droid contingent?"

The Corellian found himself a nice wall to lean against, watching with interest how scrap metal was steadily turning back into something useful. "Well, Uncle D, you can't expect me to make like a bouncy ball all day long, just to find out if your temper tantrum has blown over yet."

For a moment the grip tightened, until Jix could have sworn he could hear his vertebras creaking, before it went back to a mere reminder. "Ack! Still a touchy point, got it."

"But maintenance droids, Jixton? What was the point with that?"

The former combat instructor shrugged. "Actually, some guy suggested they might be necessary, to clean up the mess if you were in a bad mood – which he denied. Perhaps you know him, came by this morning, shortly after me, left in rather a hurry?

Like," he pointed towards the outward door, "flying droid-style hurry…"

"Captain Piett." The Sithlord's tone dripped menace.

"Ah!" Jix raised an admonishing finger, "No strangling of people, just because they think they know you better than your favorite nephew. That captain guy insisted on going to speak with you, even after I told him not to, because he seems to think you're not in a bad mood, yet, if people haven't ended as a smear on the wall, so far."

He grinned at his adopted uncle. "Been with you a while, huh?"

The Sithlord tinkered on, silently, for a few moments. "A while, yes. Having to replace him would be… unfortunate."

"Ha, I knew it! You like the stuffed shirt, Uncle D, I knew the moment I saw him clutching his throat but still breathing. You only give people your special hug if you really like them." Said _'hug'_ drew tighter again, but Jix went on, undeterred.

"No need to worry about him. I dropped him off at the med-deck, and when I checked through the files an hour ago" – if Sithlords would sigh, Lord Vader might have, at this blithe breach of security and patient confidentiality, but obviously they don't, and he didn't – "they had already taken care of a couple of cracked ribs and some internal bruising around the larynx. Tomorrow your captain will be as good as new."

Setting down some reassembled droid part with warning finality, the Sithlord changed the topic. "Jixton, why have you come here, in the first place?"

"Ah, yes, remember that Skywalker kid, you told me to keep an eye on? Well, he got himself into this scrape on Ralltiir…"

* * *

A/N: Jix was a sergeant before he was discharged dishonorably (DD) and sent to Kessel, but my sources are in disagreement if he held the rank of Gunnery Sergeant or Master Sergeant. I made him both, to cover my bases.


End file.
